Old Is New: Dick Enberg Gets Cozy as Voice of San Diego Padres

SAN DIEGO, Calif. -- Dick Enberg looked out over Petco Park and across downtown San Diego. The sun had broken through, welcoming baseball back to San Diego.

"Oh, myyyy!" he said to begin the broadcast. "The man upstairs must be a baseball fan. The rain has cleared and blue skies are overhead ...."

Enberg was off and running in his new hometown gig. Four innings later, so were the Padres.

Scoring 10 runs in the fourth, the Padres charged to a strangely easy victory over the Atlanta Braves -- 17-2 -- yet the romp in San Diego's 42nd home opener wasn't the only return of note on Monday .

Enberg giving up his beloved French Open and football and basketball games so that he can call Padres contests -- some 120 of them -- suggests that maybe Old Man Baseball still has some game.

"I've always found it magical," said the Hall of Fame broadcaster and owner of 14 Emmy Awards.

He has called nearly every major sports event that a mike jockey could want. The Super Bowl. Wimbledon. Olympic Games. The Rose Bowl. The Masters. He was still in demand to work in any sport that he pleased, yet he chose to return to slow, stodgy baseball. After a quarter of a century away from the sport as a full-time broadcaster, he wanted back in.

The job allows Enberg, 75, to work closer to his home in La Jolla, 15 minutes north of downtown San Diego.

But the primary allure was the sport itself, he said.

"Before I could say yes to the Padre deal, I said, 'OK, what if all of the things you're doing now, and enjoying -- college basketball, all four majors in tennis, NFL football -- if everything went away, would you still want to do baseball?' And I said, 'Yeah.'

"This is the time to make that call," he said. "The people that love the game, they understand how I feel."

For West Coast Bias, it was a home run.

Enberg's crisp voice and gift for narrative bring the game home in style, and as a bonus they recall the many golden years for sports on the West Coast. Southern California was home to giants on the ballfields and basketball courts -- and in the broadcasting booths. Among the stars who emerged in the 1960s and 1970s was Enberg.

"We were spoiled rotten, no question," said Tony Gwynn, the former Padres star. "I grew up in Long Beach. I was a Dodgers fan, listening to Vin Scully. But I also listened to Dick Enberg and Don Drysdale with the Angels. You had Chick Hearn and the Lakers, Tommy Kelly and USC."

In the winters, Enberg worked out of Westwood, home to John Wooden's UCLA Bruins.

"You'd listen to him do UCLA basketball, and you wanted to go outside and shoot baskets," said John Kentera, a broadcaster with the Padres' flagship radio station, 1090 AM.

Summers were for baseball, and Enberg and Drysdale were good enough to make the California Angels relevant. They were Lennon and McCartney, each special in his own right, but extraordinary together. Enberg was the trained voice, Drysdale the expert drawing from his Hall of Fame career as a Dodgers pitcher. They flowed.

"Dick Enberg and Don Drysdale were the best broadcasting team of all time, any sport" said Reds play-by-play man Marty Brennaman, an award-winning broadcaster in both baseball and basketball.

"Dick Enberg and Don Drysdale were the best broadcasting team of all time, any sport."
-- Reds broadcaster Marty Brennaman As a young broadcaster, Brennaman listened to tapes of Enberg and Drysdale. "They were just incredible," he said.

Artists talk about how a great performer inspires them to new heights.

Scully did that for Enberg and Drysdale.

"Looking back on it," Enberg said from Petco Park on Monday, "we were damn good -- because we were not only inspired but motivated by the competition across town: That poet laureate of the game, Vin Scully calling the games for the Dodgers.

"We had our engineer create a box, a toggle switch for each microphone, so that our mikes were live as long as the toggle switch was off. So if Don was saying something, and I wanted to come into his inning, I could come in, or he could come in to my innings.

"We figured that maybe two of us would be almost as good as Scully was with the Dodgers."

Said Gwynn: "They painted a picture. They made you feel like you were at the ballpark."

Gwynn met with Enberg on Monday morning to prepare for the broadcast, and because it was his first chance to work with Enberg, Gwynn said he felt extra pressure to do well. The Hall of Fame outfielder and .338 lifetime hitter said he was nervous, in a good way. From the master, he received reassurance, like when Gwynn used to counsel young teammates.

"Dick was telling me about kind of grooming Don Drysdale, and Don Drysdale really took to it, doing his homework and studying," Gwynn said. "I told Dick I'm going to try to be the same way. I'm excited."

Vowing to another Channel 4 San Diego partner, Mark Grant, that he will not be out-prepared, Enberg has impressed Padres people by taking extra effort to learn about the club and its opponents. He enlisted a translator to help him interview Spanish-speaking players. He worked five Padres games in spring training despite traveling near and far for CBS to call basketball games. He even addressed the team, as a favor to manager Bud Black. Coming off Sunday's game in Denver with the Padres, he was at Petco Park on Monday more than five hours before Chargers quarterback Phillip Rivers, looking like Nuke LaLoosh, misfired a ceremonial pitch past the Padres' Mike Adams.

The only glitch for Enberg in his return to baseball has been his health -- a two-week-old cold having strained his voice.

"I've tried to get through it," he said. "I just hope I feel better soon. I apologized to [Padres personnel]. I know I'm going to be better."

He said the six Padres games he worked before Monday's rout only reinforced that his decision was the right one.

"It's our national game, and it's the game that I was teethed upon," he said.

Enberg's father, in fact, fitted his infant son with a miniature baseball bat for teething. The son of a man who attended some 30 consecutive openers played by the Detroit Tigers, Enberg's father also threw a nasty fork ball and enjoyed fooling his son with it. Enberg recounted those days before Monday's game. Then he widened the lens.

"Baseball is our national game," Enberg said, "but it's the family connection and the connection with history that is so appealing to me. What happens today relates to something that happened 50 years ago, and a story that some father is telling his kid today is a story that his father told him.

"It is a game of the very best athletes, yet the game is the very same game with the very same rules as for every little kid that's playing baseball now."

Deft storyteller that he is, Enberg finished it off before heading to the booth.

"And on top of all that, I dreamed that I would play right field for the Detroit Tigers," he said. "I was 18 when Al Kaline took my job and was a Hall of Famer, and I've never forgiven him or the Tigers for that."